Priests Brawl In Bethlehem’s Church Of The Nativity

Priests Brawl In Bethlehem’s Church Of The Nativity, There are odd holiday traditions and then there’s the annual priestly brawl in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity. “Around a hundred priests fought with brooms as they cleaned the church in preparation for Orthodox Christmas,” the BBC reports.

It’s a not-so-sacred, but still time-honored rite in the church, apparently, and while not every year brings raucous video footage, the conflagration between Catholic, Orthodox, and Armenian Apostolic priests is a regular thing. “It was a trivial problem that … occurs every year,”

Bethlehem police Lieutenant-Colonel Khaled al-Tamimi told Reuters, according to the BBC. The clergy fight over the boundaries between the different denominations’ jurisdictions.